


All You Need To Save Me

by luninosity



Series: Like Sugar (Spell It Out) [3]
Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Comfort Sex, Dom/sub, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, First argument, Living Together, M/M, check note at the beginning for possible illness trigger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:00:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2321516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A first fight, some revelations, chocolate truffles, compromises, and a lot of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All You Need To Save Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Greggles_Lestrade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greggles_Lestrade/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [All You Need To Save Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2365628) by [ogawaryoko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogawaryoko/pseuds/ogawaryoko)



> Title from Tegan & Sara's "Soil, Soil," this time.
> 
>  **Possible warning--contains a spoiler--just in case:** contains Sebastian admitting that his stepfather has Alzheimer's, and the attendant emotions.

_Chris_  
  
A week. A fantastical enchanted multifaceted week. One week.  
  
One week before their new life implodes. Should’ve seen it coming, Chris thinks. And maybe, without knowing, he had.  
  
He’s idly flipping through the mail when it happens. The collapse of the world. One apocalypse, personally delivered in a discreet business-sized envelope and a message on Sebastian’s cellphone. Ground out from under feet. Air vanished into the void.  
  
He had known that not everything’d be perfect. He’d known that Sebastian’d come into their marriage— _any_ marriage—with reluctance. After being outed. Not the ideal.  
  
He’s spent seven days watching Sebastian flinch at the sight of the collar every time they get dressed to go out. The flinches have been getting smaller, but not gone. He hopes someday they might be; hopes they might not be, and that’s confusing and painful. Heart at war with itself. Sebastian accepting the role, the collar, the public dynamic, would be easier on them both. No more small internal thousand-times-over deaths at each moment of resignation.  
  
Sebastian accepting the role might not be Sebastian anymore. Might lose that brilliant independent spark that glows so vibrantly.  
  
Of course that might not be the case. Sebastian might be at peace with the outward sign of submission, with himself.  
  
Or—he might not. Chris doesn’t know. The not-knowing’s a daily heartbreak, but not one he could ever bring himself to give up. Not when he gets to see winter-sky eyes every morning, when they wake up sleepy and blinking and adorably disconcerted by the presence of day. Not when Sebastian’s told him those words: I wanted you. I chose you.  
  
Out of everyone, all the possible suitors in all the world, Sebastian chose him.  
  
So it’s not perfect, so Sebastian hasn’t instantly fallen in love with him, but nevertheless Chris can’t keep himself from whistling in the shower. Sebastian likes Billy Idol. Nineties pop. Oldies. Dean Martin and Sinatra. Chris sings “Fly Me To The Moon” to the soap and grins at the shampoo.  
  
He’s tried not to ask that they go out too many places. Dinner, twice. A movie one night. The latest Disney animated fluff, nothing demanding, in the dark. Sebastian’d held his hand. Every atom of Chris’s body’d instantly crackled like giddy schoolboy fireworks.  
  
He wants to offer to take Sebastian shopping—maybe if they pick out a collar together, maybe if Sebastian has input—but he doesn’t know how to begin to frame that suggestion. Not in the face of the sheer bravery he’s witnessing every time the black leather with its softer blue lining goes on. Anyway, he’s mostly sure it’s not the style of the accessory. Matches ninety percent of Sebastian’s wardrobe, slim-fit dark leather jackets and sapphire scarves and blue-and-white striped sweaters.  
  
It’s the presence. The connotations. Disproportionate weight.  
  
They’re living in Sebastian’s apartment for the moment—well, for a week’s worth of moments—because it’s the most convenient for hunting a new city living space. They’ve agreed to keep Chris’s place in Boston and spend time at both; not like they can’t afford two homes. They each command a decent income. Sebastian, in fact, makes more than Chris, a fact which’d come to light when they’d rearranged household accounts. Sebastian had blushed and tried to dismiss some of that wealth as unimportant—“I used to say yes to scoring terrible films because I needed a job!”—and Chris had said, “Wait, which films? Did you mean _Jacuzzi Time Travel_? Because I saw that twice!” and Sebastian had clearly mentally contemplated the likelihood of sinking through the floor of their accountant’s office.  
  
Chris had tossed him into bed upon arriving home and subsequently proceeded to tease him and toy with him and not let him come until he admitted to at least liking his own music. After two hours, had figured out that Sebastian was prolonging the denial for fun.  
  
He’s grinning, remembering, sorting through the mail. Huh. An envelope. From a hospital. Addressed to his husband. That’s…odd but not concerning in and of itself; Sebastian probably had a physical or something, in fact had to have a full check-up before the ceremony, so maybe this is a delayed bill or a reminder about scheduling a new appointment.  
  
He could open Sebastian’s mail, but he’s not going to. He sets the envelope aside.  
  
His husband’s currently getting dressed, or supposedly so. They have vague plans to go for a walk before the looming rain stops merely looming. Nothing big, just a few blocks over to one of Sebastian’s favorite café haunts, a tiny wrought-iron swing-music haven Chris’d never known existed. Sebastian loves New York, he knows, and his grin softens around the corners, picturing happy blue eyes and expansive gestures. Sebastian loves showing him New York, he’s learning.  
  
They’ve been looking at a few condominiums and apartment homes. One in particular. He’s thinking they might make an offer—it’s properly for sale, which means it’ll be theirs. Well. His on paper, and his stomach grumbles uneasily at that. Submissives can’t own property. Not to be trusted.  
  
He trusts Sebastian. Completely. More than he’d trust himself, truth be told. Sebastian’s built his own life out of city lights and music and freedom, here in America. Sebastian knows exactly how important having a space of one’s own can be.  
  
The place they’ve just about decided on has renovated nineteenth-century bones and a sense of eagerness, as if it’s just waiting to throw its doors wide and beckon them in to stay. It’s got swooping windows and a view of the glittering New York skyline and two stories with an abundance of bedrooms, which means Sebastian can wake up late and meander sleepily into his office without being disturbed by Chris going for a run and then barricading himself in his own studio downstairs.  
  
In fact he’ll probably come back and run upstairs and kiss his husband awake and bring coffee. He likes that idea. Spends more time than he ought to in anticipatory contemplation of it.  
  
Sebastian had wandered around the potential new place with saucer-sized eyes and fingertips absentmindedly making friends with countertops and lightswitches and brickwork. When Chris’d asked whether he liked it, he’d smiled. And Chris—who’d already liked the place on his own behalf—had resolved on the spot that, barring inspection results and any related issues, he’d go through hell and high water to get that place for that smile.  
  
Sebastian’s cellphone, lying haphazardly on the kitchen table, naturally chooses this daydream moment to go off, announcing Four Seasons tunes into the afternoon. Sherry, baby, won’t you come out tonight.  
  
Chris laughs, and then laughs at himself—how can he have grown so fond of a silly high-pitched song he’d never thought twice about, but he knows the answer to that question, and it’s tied up in the way Sebastian hums Mozart and _The Little Mermaid_ when lost in thought. In the unfurling widespread joy of Sebastian’s mouth. In his own willingness to run out and buy two extra shirts and a pair of jeans because he’s apparently moved in with his submissive instead of the other way around and has no spare clothing that’s not in Boston.  
  
Sebastian’s phone goes off again. Calling back, Chris thinks, and picks it up and glances at the screen in case it’s important, in which case he’ll go rescue his husband from the depths of the closet and the clinging tentacles of skinny jeans.  
  
The screen informs him the call’s from a hospital.  
  
He blinks. Nope, still a hospital. Obviously a wrong number; he hopes whatever message they’re leaving isn’t important.  
  
The screen…is informing him that it’s a hospital.  
  
Labeled as such. Not an unknown number. Which it would be. If it weren’t a number Sebastian had saved.  
  
The sky goes from mysterious-pearl to ominous-shadow outside, just in case he’s not got the point.  
  
He actually says, “Wait,” out loud. Like the cellphone and the hideous envelope and the whole fucking universe might listen and not crumble into devastation.  
  
Sebastian doesn’t pop out of the bedroom and magically clear up the catastrophe with one wryly amused sentence, either.  
  
He takes a deep breath. Two. Tries to think logically. There must be a reason. A physical, he’d thought earlier. A follow-up.  
  
Except Sebastian’s latest physical and blood work had been a pre-ceremony requirement—so had Chris’s—and they’d seen each other’s results. Sebastian’s fine. Nothing to warrant envelopes and lengthy messages.  
  
Nothing he knows about.  
  
Nothing he’s been allowed to know about.  
  
And that means there is something he doesn’t know.  
  
He shouldn’t go looking. He knows he shouldn’t. It’s not fair to Sebastian. It’s an invasion of privacy, when hesitant-river eyes are only beginning to open up to him. It’s an abuse of their positions. It’s horrible and he’s horrible and he can’t not open the account on his own laptop, can’t not type in the password while watching his fingers as if they belong to someone else.  
  
Sebastian had changed that password once, after the first accountant-related meeting. Had told him the new one, smile a rueful line in one corner of that expressive mouth. Because they’d agreed that Chris could know. Chris is allowed to know. Chris is also aware that this is a technicality: legal but brutal.  
  
His pulse hammers in his ears. At first the numbers don’t make sense, and then they do, the further back he looks. He’d not bothered looking in detail when they’d done the set-up. Had been too busy being stunned and impressed and amazed at the size of the most recent check from a major studio. Had assumed Sebastian would tell him anything important.  
  
Assumptions. So wrong.  
  
Bills paid. Checks written. Medical expenses. Scans and exams.  
  
Sebastian’s using that composer’s income to pay for check-ups and tests. Hospital fees. Doctor’s fees. Medications.  
  
Oh God.  
  
Chris sits at the computer slowly going numb, while outside the clouds gather and gossip, sensing the shift in mood. What if—what if Sebastian’s—  
  
He can’t even shape the thought. No. No, please. Just no.  
  
The object of his scattered thoughts comes back out of the bedroom, wearing low-rise dark jeans and no shirt and a distracted expression. “Have you seen my—”  
  
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Too harsh. Too abrupt. He doesn’t recognize the scrape of his own voice through his throat.  
  
Sebastian now looks confused. “About my blue notebook? The one I take to Starbucks?”  
  
Chris doesn’t mean to have this conversation now. He’s not prepared. He’s not rational. But his heart’s screaming and the sentences are coming out. “About your account. About _expenses_.”  
  
Sebastian blinks. “I bought a new digital recording mixer yesterday? It was on sale, and I didn’t exactly need it but—”  
  
“Not that. I don’t care. Buy whatever you want.” He keeps his voice even with herculean effort. He’s ninety-nine percent sure that’s purposeful evasion. Sebastian’s not bad at deflection, but the wariness in blue eyes gives him away. “About hospitals calling, maybe?”  
  
Sebastian’s face goes absolutely white. “Chris—”  
  
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out? You’re not very good at hiding it. What don’t I know?”  
  
“I can’t—” Those eyes are huge. Pleading for him to stop. “It’s nothing to do with you, I swear, Chris—sir—”  
  
“It’s about you! And you didn’t, what, think I needed to know? If you’re sick, if you’re—I need to know because if you end up in the fucking hospital they’re gonna call me and I’d like to not be the last to fucking know!” He’s shouting. He can’t seem to stop. But it’s too much like before, too much like a dreadful mid-afternoon phone call and a compassionate hand on his shoulder; too much like the face of someone he loves lying still and lifeless in a coffin, and he hadn’t been there, hadn’t been able to stop it, and this time the face isn’t Matt’s but Sebastian’s and he _can’t stop it from happening again—_  
  
“I’m not!” Sebastian stretches a hand his direction, then seems to think better of attempting to touch him and pulls it back. “I’m not, I won’t, I promise, I’m not sick—”  
  
Chris is on his feet. Can’t recall when that happened. “How can I believe you—how can I believe that’s true, I don’t even know you, not really—were your blood tests real, before the ceremony—“ The words are cruel, too cruel, he can see them opening up chasms even as they spill out ugly and hateful. Can see Sebastian flinching with each wound.  
  
He doesn’t mean them. He wants to say he doesn’t mean any of it. But he can’t go through this again, he _can’t_ , and he’s cold and terrified and nauseated and _hurt_. The terrible voice that sounds like his demands, “Did you marry me because I wouldn’t ask, because I’d trust you, you knew I wanted you—”  
  
“My stepfather has Alzheimer’s!” Sebastian shouts, and then flings a hand across his own mouth as if trying to hold back the words from existence.  
  
Too late. Far too late, under the merciless avid gleam of the kitchen lights.  
  
Chris feels as if he’s been punched in the stomach. Air gushing like blood from lungs. Sebastian’s staring at him, chest going up and down, fingers still pressed futilely over too-honest lips. Those eyes…  
  
Chris wants to throw up. Those eyes. Utterly stricken. Action implied in the adjective: Sebastian looks as if Chris _has_ struck him, making him say the words.  
  
He trips over a step forward, forgetting that the table’s in his way, holding out a hand.  
  
Sebastian takes a step back, shaking. Collides palpably and painfully with the corner of the wall. Chris hears the impact.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers at last, hand remaining uselessly out. “I’m so sorry. I…”  
  
Sebastian shakes his head, makes a small sound that might’ve once been the start of a word in some language Chris does or doesn’t know, stumbles over his first step, and then gets halfway across the living room before sliding down into a heap at the foot of the sofa. He’s not crying, but his shoulders’re trembling, and he pulls knees up and hides his face in folded arms atop them, and then doesn’t move.  
  
Chris stands immobile while his heart shreds itself into a thousand tiny ragged pieces. He doesn’t know what to do. What to say. What can ever be enough for what he’s just done.  
  
Hot shame skewers his gut. He does know Sebastian. Sebastian’s never lied to him. Sometimes hidden true wants behind passive compliance, but never lied.  
  
He can’t do _nothing_. He’s not built that way. He can’t watch Sebastian in pain, pain that he’s caused, and not apologize.  
  
Sebastian continues to not move. As if he might never stir out of that ball of long legs and anguish again.  
  
Chris swallows. His throat aches. His heart aches, or at least all the ragged pieces do. Finally he just walks out into the living room and sits down crosslegged on the floor next to all the despair, not touching but close enough that touch is possible if one of them reaches out.  
  
He says, “I’m sorry.”  
  
He says, “I didn’t know. That’s not an excuse. You didn’t have to tell me. We only met a week ago. You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m sorry.”  
  
He says, “I’m scared, I was scared, I didn’t know and all I could think about was losing you and I—I panicked. I lost someone I lo—someone I cared about once before. I didn’t know how I was going to survive that again. That’s not an excuse either. I’m sorry.”  
  
Sebastian says, not looking up, “You know, I’d managed to last two years and eight months without saying those words, that way, out loud. Until today.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Stop. You aren’t helping.”  
  
“I’m s—I don’t know what else to say. What do you want me to do?” He’d thought his heart’d been in pieces before. He hadn’t known how much more shredding there could be. “Do you—do you want a divorce? If you want—if you can’t forgive me—not that you have to, of course not, I—I won’t argue. If you want to go.”  
  
“He bought me a telescope,” Sebastian says. “For my thirteenth birthday. I wanted to be an astronaut. And the crazy part was, I barely even knew what astronauts did—as if Romania ever had a space program—but I loved space and science fiction, and he bought me a telescope and astronomy books and we spent nights on the roof looking for Mars.”  
  
Chris takes a breath, because that’s a pause—though he has no idea what he can conceivably say—but Sebastian goes on. “He didn’t know anything about astronomy either. I found out later. He learned. For me. He liked— _likes_ —poetry and teaching languages. He used to write sonnets for my mother. And he told me once that he knew he couldn’t take my father’s place, and I didn’t say anything because I was twelve years old and in a second brand-new country with the man who was going to marry my mother, and I hate myself sometimes for that.”  
  
“You—”  
  
“Six months after that I started calling him Dad. In Romanian that should’ve been _tată_ , but I couldn’t quite—he smiled at me, though, like it was the best fucking present anyone’d ever given him. He forgets my name these days. When he tries to tell people he’s proud of his son. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to lose my father. Did you ask whether I wanted a divorce?”  
  
Chris, falling off the edge of the cliff, chokes out, “Anything you want. Please. Tell me what you want to do.”  
  
“I’m not going to leave you.” Sebastian still hasn’t looked up. “I know you were scared. You told me. You didn’t mean it.”  
  
“I hurt you,” Chris whispers. “I—what I said, God, I’m so sorry—”  
  
“You said you couldn’t do it again. Losing someone you care about.” This time Sebastian does lift his head. His eyes’re red, but not overflowing. “You care that much. About me.”  
  
“I do. I—” Giving up. Nothing left to say. Sebastian’s decision. “I do. If that matters.”  
  
“It matters.” Sebastian sighs. “I suppose I should’ve told you sooner…”  
  
“You didn’t have to!”  
  
“Not that. I care about you too. I didn’t expect to, but I did, the second you got me on my feet during the ceremony…so I do. I won’t leave you because you’re scared. That’s ridiculous.”  
  
“Ridiculous…”  
  
“Oh…sorry, Chris.”  
  
“No, say it, I am. You told me to stop saying sorry and I will if you want but I mean it. You—wait, you said you felt—about me—”  
  
“Because I mean that.” One side of Sebastian’s mouth quirks up: not a smile, but not _not_ a smile, either. “So. Here we are.”  
  
“Here we are.” He tries smiling back through the heartache. Turns out it’s possible, with Sebastian looking at him. “And we…maybe…want to be? And—oh, wait, idea, hang on—”  
  
On his feet. Running over to the table. Sketchpad and pen. Back, thumping gracelessly down at Sebastian’s side. Baffled-ocean eyes follow every motion; Chris says, “One sec,” and scribbles the words, the date, his own signature. “Here.”  
  
Sebastian takes the pad with one bewildered hand. Reads. Then looks up. “You—you can’t mean this.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure it’s legal,” Chris confirms. “We can get it notarized or something if you want, but you’d have a good case if you took it to court.”  
  
“But…” Sebastian touches the words, the physical indentations of pen on paper, with a fingertip. Tracing promises. “Do you know what this means?”  
  
“Yeah.” The words proclaim, in Chris’s messy rapid-fire scrawl, that Sebastian has final say over any decisions involving his own family. Chris waives any right to dictate terms of his submissive’s visitation rights or financial contributions or ability to make medically-related choices in that area. Chris also promises to help out in any way he conceivably can, monetarily or otherwise.  
  
Maybe his phrasing’s awkward and his writing’s hasty, but he means it with every crumpled shard of his heart.  
  
Sebastian’s index finger follows the lines of Chris’s name, continuing to touch as if the touch’ll make it believable. Signed more sloppily than it is on their marriage contract, that name, but recognizably his.  
  
“Chris…” Blue eyes lift, wondering, accepting. “I don’t know what to say.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Chris says, and inches a breath closer to him on the shaggy rug. “I get that one a lot, welcome to the club.”  
  
“But…you _do_ know what you’ve just…I could choose to not obey you, if you asked me to come home, with this as an argument…I could give my parents _all_ my income…you couldn’t stop me.” Sebastian licks lips. Shaken. He’s still shirtless and enormous-eyed, and while he’s got a lovely amount of muscle, and at any other time Chris’d be shamelessly appreciating that fact, right now it only serves to underscore the incongruous vulnerability. “Don’t do this if you don’t mean it.”  
  
“Good thing I mean it,” Chris vows, offering an arm. Sebastian leans in and lets Chris drape it across his shoulders. “I trust you. And, hey, if it makes you feel better, we can totally live off my income. That’s more traditional anyway, right? Me providing for you?”  
  
Sebastian almost laughs, a short huff of ragged breath. “If you’d like. I am sorry I frightened you. I should have told you. I couldn’t…”  
  
“I know why you didn’t.” He dares to rest his cheek in all the fluffy hair. It frisks up to tease his ear, lonely and wanting to play. “If you want to talk, I’m here. If not, I’m here for that too. Whatever.”  
  
“So many firsts,” Sebastian murmurs to the paper. “The first person I’ve told, and it’s you…the first person I ever wanted to get on my knees for…I mean honestly _wanted_. Want. Because it’s you. I should’ve thought; I knew about your—about him. Matt. I didn’t ask myself how you’d feel, how I’d feel if it were you and I saw hospital bills…”  
  
“Scared as hell,” Chris whispers. “The first person you honestly wanted…” He takes his face out of Sebastian’s hair. Slips fingers under Sebastian’s chin, asking—not ordering—him to look up. “You never wanted anyone else? At clubs, or—you didn’t—you weren’t—hurt?”  
  
“Oh. No, not like that, no.” Sebastian manages a visible smile this time. “I know what consent means. And I always did. Consent. With you it’s not physical. Or, yes, it is physical, but it also feels…right. As if I could stay on my knees for you forever and be safe. You wouldn’t need whips or gags or even restraints. I wouldn’t need them, with you.”  
  
Chris’s heart, put back together by those words, expands inside his chest. Too big to contain. The afternoon’s cool and dim, cloud-shrouded and private, giving them space. Sebastian’s skin’s warm under his hands, and the sofa’s true-blue support behind his back.  
  
He says, “I’m sorry if I ever made you think you couldn’t talk to me. About anything. I’ve never felt like this either, y’know. I never knew I could. I want to be whatever you need. I want to be better at—every fuckin’ thing. For you.”  
  
“You never,” Sebastian starts, and Chris knows exactly what he’s going to say and says it first. “You’re not him. I don’t want you to be.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Yeah, I lost someone. And I’m kinda messed up about some things because of that—I guess you know how bad, now. But we were kids, I told you, and we never had anything like—it wasn’t this. I don’t have a fuckin’ name for this. You and me. I want you. I—care about you. I want to hear you scream my name in bed and I want to kiss you the second I wake up and I want to be here for you, please let me be here for you, and please look at me like that some more?”  
  
“Like…I want to kiss you?” Sebastian says, slowly, so Chris says “If you want,” and Sebastian does.  
  
It’s a soft kiss, butterfly-wings and incredulous holding-of-breath. Sebastian starts crying at last, after, and tries to say, “Not because of—”  
  
Chris agrees, “I know, I got it, come here,” and pulls Sebastian into his lap and rubs his back while the tears tumble down.  
  
  
 _Sebastian_  
  
He cries for long enough that he loses track of time, blurry and indistinct. His nose feels swollen and red and unattractive, and so do his eyes, and he’s very sure that he looks dreadful, but he feels lighter for no reason he can explain.  
  
Chris is real. The broad chest and strong shoulders and safe arms are real, and if he’s falling apart Chris isn’t going anywhere. Holding on, instead.  
  
Safe. The words he’s never said, now spoken. The signature that means Chris won’t, can’t, interfere with whatever his stepfather and his mother need. The words that Chris gave him in return: I don’t want you to be him. I care about you. You and me.  
  
He’s having a difficult time processing. Too many upheavals. No handholds to fend off the quakes.  
  
Chris gave him freedom. Limited, of course—in the scope of decisions related to Sebastian’s family—but that vague wording can be stretched in many directions. It’s so much more than he’s ever even heard of in a contract, and unprompted. Because Chris wanted to. Because Chris thinks he’s a person. Because Chris cares about him.  
  
Chris is crying too, and pretending he’s not. Every so often one hand lifts from Sebastian’s back to swipe across eyes. Chris probably thinks he’s being subtle, but Sebastian, peeking through wet eyelashes, can tell.  
  
Eventually the tears turn into hiccups and gulps and hollow shivery composure. And it is composure; he feels, if not precisely okay, like okay might be somewhere on the horizon. Lighter, he thinks again. Catharsis. There’s a tune there, a melody just out of reach scored in raindrops and harpstrings, but he doesn’t pursue it. It’ll keep.  
  
Chris kisses the top of his head with exquisite tenderness. “Better?”  
  
“ _Da. Mulţumesc mult._ Thank you.”  
  
“All of that was thank you?”  
  
“Um…yes, I said. Thank you very much.” When he blinks, his eyelashes tangle. “Can I…water…cleaning up…”  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, “yeah, sure,” and gets them both to wobbly feet, not letting go. “Um…”  
  
“I’ll be right back,” Sebastian tells him, not bothering to wrap the tattered remnants of dignity around his shoulders. Chris hasn’t left. Isn’t disgusted with him. And that thought lets him stand there, tear-streaked and probably obviously in love, and smile.  
  
“I can get you coffee,” Chris volunteers hopefully. Eyes like wistful optimism; Sebastian wants all at once to laugh.  
  
“Yes, please. Chris?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I—” I love you. Not quite. Not yet. Soon, maybe, maybe. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”  
  
In the bathroom, he splashes cold water over his face, his eyes. The shock of it’s wonderfully cleansing. Tangible crystal, and chilly enough to make him gasp; but he does laugh in the aftermath, catching sight of himself in the mirror. Red eyes and dripping water, yes. But he also looks different, in a way he can’t describe. More free, perhaps. That could be the right word.  
  
He touches a fingertip to his throat, thoughtfully. Where his collar rests when they go out.  
  
He turns at the embarrassed throat-clearing from beyond the door. Chris is hovering plaintively in the hall with instant Starbucks-brand pumpkin-spice caffeine plus a box in the other hand. Sebastian raises eyebrows, accepting both. “I get presents?”  
  
“I bought them yesterday…meant to give them to you last night, but, um.” Chris doesn’t exactly blush. Last night had been incandescently orgasmically fun. They both remember. “Distracted. I thought you might, I don’t know, want them?”  
  
Sebastian opens the box. Four truffles. Four elegantly-decorated truffles. He recognizes the packaging, belatedly. Has allowed himself a box on tremendously rare and expensive occasions.  
  
“I do like chocolate…”  
  
“I know.” Chris shifts from foot to foot as if he wants to do or say more, as if he doesn’t know what to do or say.  
  
Sebastian picks out the closest drop of decadence, arbitrarily choosing. It’s dark and dusted with deep red hints, like miniature banked embers.  
  
When he puts it on his tongue, the world dissolves into silky bittersweet cocoa and cream. Taste and scent and awareness subsumed into heaven.  
  
And then he blinks, and opens his eyes. “Cayenne pepper? Infused into the chocolate?”  
  
Chris shrugs, one-shouldered and nervous. “Do you like it?”  
  
“Very much.” He does. He’s not had this one before. And Chris picked it out for him. Sweetness, with hidden wicked spice at the heart.  
  
Chris. He has to smile, at that, and lets his Dominant see.  
  
“So you do like it,” Chris says, hushed, gazing at him.  
  
“I said. Very much.” He steps closer. Sets the box on the bathroom counter. Is extremely aware of each sensation: the lingering sensual heat over his tongue, the chill of the air on water-splashed drying skin, the way his own muscles move. The way Chris watches his muscles move.  
  
“Um,” Chris says, continuing to be nervous and hence adorable. “The other ones…they’re not all the same…I think one’s got, like, pomegranate…and maybe champagne…is that okay? Are those things you might, y’know, like?”  
  
Sebastian takes a sip of coffee, because Chris brought him that too. The swallow leaves heat in its wake. The heat spreads out to encompass his bones. “Yes, sir.” Yes. He does like all those things.  
  
And he wants one more thing. He wants Chris. In an inexplicable tremulous pure kind of way: like he’s never been more certain of anything, and his heart’s opened up and let Chris in, and his body’s awake and weightless and craving and alive.  
  
“Okay,” Chris says, in a tone that means _are we okay?_ Sebastian reaches out, takes Chris’s fidgeting left hand, and laces their fingers together. “Okay. _Da_. May I ask you for something?”  
  
“Anything!”  
  
“Kiss me?”  
  
“Oh,” Chris breathes, astonished but with desire turning up immediately behind the surprise. “You want—yeah, of course, come here—”  
  
This kiss starts as tentative as the previous one, Chris trying not to push or exert any pressure. Sebastian pauses long enough to say, “I won’t _break_ , Chris,” and, because he’s not let go of his Dominant’s hand, puts it into his own hair.  
  
Chris stops kissing him. Looks intently into his eyes, breaths mingling, lips wet; Sebastian nods.  
  
Chris grins. Winds the hand into his hair. Tugs his head back. And dives back in, asserting rights this time, mouth hot and demanding. Tongue plundering Sebastian’s mouth. Scrape of beard over skin. Nips of teeth. Sebastian hears himself moan, and Chris licks into his mouth and devours the sound.  
  
Chris pulls him down the hall into the bedroom, hand firm around his left wrist. Sebastian, dizzy with the abrupt onslaught of emotion and possession, barely stays upright. He needs to be on his knees, needs Chris’s hands reassuring him that there’s a place he’s meant to be, needs to belong to Chris and _know_ it—  
  
The air’s bordering on icy, but that doesn’t matter. Chris will keep him warm. He believes that.  
  
Chris’s hands unbutton his jeans. Shove them down. Sebastian gasps at the suddenness; Chris steadies him with a hand on his waist, the other at the side of his throat, fingers loose and not biting down but offering affirmation. Sebastian hears himself make a sound, liquid and pleading and utterly indecent. Chris tightens the grip, testing; Sebastian quivers, reaction going straight to his cock, which jumps and hardens even more.  
  
“You like that,” Chris observes, gentle tone at odds with the way his other hand’s pressing bruises into Sebastian’s hip. That’s not conscious, he guesses; that’s Chris amazed and not thinking. He likes the feeling. Likes the idea of carrying evidence of Chris’s want on his skin.  
  
“You like being mine,” Chris says this time. “You like knowing you’re mine, don’t you? God, you’re beautiful. So fuckin’—I want to fuckin’ kiss you everywhere. Take off my clothes.”  
  
That’s an order, and it slides down his spine like heady strands of gold. Command and obedience. He’s Chris’s, because he wants to be.  
  
He tugs at Chris’s clinging long-sleeved shirt with unpracticed fingers. Chris has asked for this once or twice, but they both generally get too impatient and end up ripping clothes off; none of his previous experiences ever involved the removal of everyday home attire. He’s getting better, courtesy of determination and natural dexterity, and his Dominant doesn’t seem to mind the odd smothering with a shirt or snarled jeans around ankles.  
  
This time goes rather impressively without incident. Might be the moment. Vivid and fragile as soap-bubbles, and reflecting as many rainbows.  
  
The coffee and chocolate’re waiting, abandoned but not forgotten, in the bathroom. They’re not distressed. They’ll be there whenever someone runs back to fetch them. Coffee can be reheated, and the chocolate won’t melt in this chilly weather. Secure. Content.  
  
Still here. Like Chris.  
  
He’s kneeling, because he’d had to in order to cope with Chris’s jeans and boxer shorts. The carpet caresses plush encouragement onto his skin. Chris settles a hand in his hair and tests, “Good, that was very good, I’m happy with you,” and Sebastian’s hips jerk involuntarily as the praise registers. He knows he’s blushing; his emotions can’t seem to figure out whether to be embarrassed that praise for a simple action can mean so much, or incredibly aroused at the headspinning rush of having been good for Chris, or scared _because_ it means so much. In the confusion, they opt for acceptance.  
  
Chris strokes a thumbtip over his eyebrow. Sebastian leans forward and kisses his Dominant’s hip. And then, drawn by impulse, the softer skin of Chris’s inner thigh, and lower. Chris’s calf, muscular and covered in enticing masculine fuzziness. Finally, without looking up, he breathes a kiss over the top of Chris’s foot; and then sits back on his heels, breathless.  
  
After a second or two of silence, he cracks and has to glance up through lowered eyelashes. Chris hasn’t moved a muscle, and is staring at him with an expression that can best be described as stunned reverence. Chris’s cock is rock-hard and pushing insistently upward, nestled in its bed of dark curls.  
  
Chris’s lips shape his name, but no sound emerges. A second try achieves, “Sebastian…”  
  
Sebastian, given this response, looks up properly. Even lifts an eyebrow that direction. “Yes, Chris?”  
  
“Oh my God,” Chris says.  
  
“I want you,” Sebastian tells him. Talking’s a bit of an effort, and likely to become more so, but this needs to be said. “I want this. With you.”  
  
Chris stares at him for a few more seconds, and then says, “Fuck yes,” and hauls him to his feet and kisses him so thoroughly Sebastian nearly comes on the spot. So good, so _good_ , exactly what he’s craving, and the clamoring emotions fall quiet and quiescent as Chris lays him down on the bed.  
  
Chris’s hands are authoritative. Chris’s voice is equally so, ordering him to put his hands above his head, to keep them still, to spread his legs. He does. The waters close in, stained-glass serenity. The color of Chris’s eyes and cathedral tranquility, and this is an act of devotion. He does want to come—his cock’s full and heavy with impending orgasm—but that’s less important than the all-encompassing shudders of bliss. If Chris tells him he can, he will; if Chris says no, that’ll be good too. Because he’s good. For Chris.  
  
Chris is fumbling with the lube, swearing briefly, muttering under his breath. “Stupid slippery—come on, Chris, hurry up—Sebastian? Still with me?” Fingers tapping his cheek. Checking in. “Color?”  
  
“Green,” Sebastian tells him. “Emerald. Peridot. Jade.” The world’s glowing and wine-sweet around him. The weight of Chris’s gaze is hot as a bonfire and lights pleasurable sparks in his stomach and lower. His cock rubs against his body; he knows he’d come if Chris touched him there, and Chris doesn’t, and he doesn’t ask. He likes the feeling.  
  
“You and the vocabulary,” Chris murmurs, and kisses him, openmouthed and filthy, leaving his lips wet and bitten. “Keep your hands there. This might not last too long. Just lookin’ at you, so good for me, my little submissive…so ready for me…you always are, aren’t you? Anything I want to do to you, any time, I could walk into your office and bend you over your desk on the spot and you’d love it…”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian moans, except it’s less a word and more a whimper. “Yes, Chris, _te rog,_ please…” Chris probably wouldn’t, likely wouldn’t—they both know about art and interruptions of art—but the _thought_ , God yes, and it would be a yes, he’d beg Chris to fuck him harder, knocking script pages and music notes onto the floor.  
  
“You would, yeah.” Chris’s hands are doing delectable things to his nipples. Pinching, twisting, flicking. Just enough pain to throw every drop of pleasure into brilliant relief. “You’d spend all day ready for me if I asked, wouldn’t you? If I told you to go to one of your meetings with a plug inside you and my collar around your neck, you’d do it, and you’d like it, walking around all day stuffed full because I wanted you that way?”  
  
“Oh _God_ —” The bliss splinters into sharp-edged ecstasy. Prisms fracturing. He can’t breathe, faced with whatever Chris is doing now. Artist’s hands. One of them skims over but doesn’t land on his straining cock. He sobs in frustration.  
  
“Is that a yes?” Chris does that…something…to his nipple again. It hurts, and he wants to curl up around abused flesh and cry, but he also never wants it to stop. And Chris has told him not to move. That comprehension sinks in anew, and he trembles with unfulfilled longing and awful desire.  
  
Chris pauses. Kisses the nipple he’s been tormenting, deliberate laps of tongue. Sebastian gives up all over again, one more level of surrender, rationality overrun by delicious anguish. He’s Chris’s and he’ll come when Chris wants and feel everything Chris wants him to feel, and the sense of rightness is so deep he thinks it’ll never completely go away. Not after this.  
  
“I could put nipple clamps on you,” Chris muses. “You’d look good in jewelry…you did say you like it to hurt, sometimes…right now, though, no toys. Not for this. You and me. Color.”  
  
He has to actively pull the word out from the stardust that’s his brain. “… _verde_. Ah…green.”  
  
“Ohhhkay,” Chris says, “that we might have to talk about, if you’re gonna forget English when I fuck you, not that I mind. Kind of an awesome compliment. _Verde_ , okay, got it. Can I fuck you now—no, wait, not a question. I’m going to fuck you now, because you’re mine, and because you said I could, sub.”  
  
Sebastian nods even though it’s not a question. Chris laughs—it’s an awestruck sort of laugh—and slips a hand between his spread legs. The hand’s forceful but very slick; the lube, he recalls indistinctly. The scent of raspberries, this time. Purple-red and summer-hued. Saturating every breath.  
  
Chris’s fingers work him open relentlessly, swift but not sacrificing care; they find that spot inside him and stroke and the world goes suspended and airless for a moment. He doesn’t come, not quite, but his cock pulses against his stomach, leaving sticky smears he can feel.  
  
Chris sounds as desperate as he feels. “Okay—please say okay, now, ’cause I can’t—”  
  
“ _Please_ —”  
  
He’s not as stretched as longer prep time would’ve provided for, and there’s a second of head-clearing brighter edges that aren’t precisely pain but twinkle with potential broken glass; but Chris employed excessive amounts of lube and Sebastian’s body’s used to opening up for that glorious length after a week of honeymoon-passionate use. Muscles quiver and give way, his hole taking Chris’s cock; Chris pushes forward steadily and inexorably, and Sebastian pants and whimpers and cries, wanting more. Chris sneaks a hand underneath his head and cradles him close, and Sebastian arches up against him and Chris sinks in to the hilt.  
  
They lie together, both breathless, foreheads touching, for a second. Chris kisses his cheekbone, his nose. Sebastian smiles back and rocks his hips upward, enjoying the slide of Chris inside him and the drag of his own arousal between their bodies. Chris whispers his name, and starts moving.  
  
Faster. Harder. Each thrust slams into that spot and makes him see comets. One of Chris’s hands finds his where they’ve remained obediently in place on the pillow. Wraps around both wrists, pinning them together.  
  
Sebastian moans loudly enough at that one that Chris kisses him into silence, stealing away his ability to think. The bed shakes gleefully beneath them.  
  
Chris pulls back just enough. Brings up the other hand and touches Sebastian’s throat, the same gesture as before: not hard, not cutting off air, but a large and strong-fingered reminder.  
  
Sebastian meets his husband’s eyes, and nods, serenely confident and buoyed by unending sparkles.  
  
Chris groans, and his hips speed up, as if the thought’s enough. Sebastian moves with him, lost in euphoria; Chris’s breath catches. The fingers curl in more tightly, abrupt, and the next inhale’s not impossible but more difficult.  
  
Chris fucks him that way, and Sebastian comes apart beneath him, hyper-aware of everything and yet oddly distant, drifting in the sea of sensory input. Chris’s weight and sweat atop him. The crackling spikes of lightning every time Chris moves inside him. The rasp of his breath scraping in and out of his lungs. Real. All of it, real. He’s never been more alive, never been this consumed by radiance.  
  
Chris pulls nearly all the way out, plunges back in, leans down. Whispers, words superheated against his ear, “Come for me.”  
  
On the sound of those words, that command, the rigid wonderful length of Chris inside him rubbing over that spot, the weight of Chris’s claim on his throat, he does. The orgasm hits like nothing he’s ever felt. A thunderclap with no sound. A shooting star full of wildness.  
  
Chris doesn’t let up even then. Sebastian’s limp and quivering in the wake of release when Chris starts moving inside him all over again. And he can’t, he can’t, it’s too much, it hurts and it feels too good and he’s crying as his body clenches helplessly around that iron length—  
  
Chris groans his name and comes, spurts of heat jetting into him, and falls forward atop him, face buried in Sebastian’s hair.  
  
Several long minutes later, his Dominant wakes up enough to mumble decisively, “Mine.” Sebastian’s still crying—in a good way, he feels like he’s been emptied out and broken and made whole anew—and can’t answer, which leads to Chris bolting upright with anxious eyes, which leads to an inadvertent yelp on Sebastian’s part because Chris’s softening cock’s still nestled inside him.  
  
“Oh God—” Chris frantically takes his own weight, hovering on arms. “Okay, okay, don’t move, how bad—oh fuck I hurt you—how _bad_ did I hurt you—”  
  
Sebastian attempts talking, stops to swallow, essays a second attempt. “You didn’t. Green, Chris. I’m fine.”  
  
“You—”  
  
“Surprised. When you moved. But fine. Really.” He reaches up, entirely peacefully, and tugs at Chris’s shoulders. “That was…intense. I liked it.”  
  
“You did?” Chris rolls to his side, pulling Sebastian with him, into his arms. “Even when I…” Fingers tap speakingly at his throat. “Even that?”  
  
“All of it.” He rests his hand over Chris’s. “I was thinking…not then, I wasn’t thinking then…just now…you know I’ve been not the best about wearing your collar.”  
  
“I know.” Chris is playing with his hair now, eyes not leaving his. “I don’t mind. You know I don’t.”  
  
“I know. But…I like your hand there. We can try that again. We can try it…this…with me wearing your collar, I think.”  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, and then a couple of very astounded blasphemous phrases. “Yeah, fuck yeah, yes—if you want to. Only if you want to.”  
  
“I want to try.” Head on Chris’s shoulder, Chris’s hand in his hair, he adds, “I think…one more thing…you can say no to this one.”  
  
“Probably won’t. What?”  
  
“I’d like to see my parents. With you, I mean. I’d like you to meet my parents.” And he hopes that Chris will somehow impossibly understand how much courage it’s taking to ask. Chris has corresponded with his mother, of course, during contract negotiations, and they’d all been in the same room for the marriage ceremony. But this is more. He’s asking for more. He’s asking because he thinks that Chris might know what that means.  
  
Chris swallows. Hard. Twice. Seems to be having a tricky time finding words. There’s a shine in his eyes. “I—yeah. I would, I would like that, yes, I’d—be so fuckin’ honored. You’d do that for me?”  
  
“For us.” He nudges Chris’s ankle with his toes. Chris instantly gets the request and plops his leg on top of Sebastian’s foot, weight pinning him down. Sebastian hums a kiss into the underside of Chris’s jaw; Chris laughs and tightens the arm around him. “For us, you said.”  
  
“You and me,” Sebastian says, and Chris kisses his forehead and says, “Teach me your Romanian word for green.”


End file.
